Micro-blogging? Study finds 40% of Twitter posts are 'pointless babble'

It became an internet sensation overnight as millions of people logged on to update the world on their lives.

But a new study has concluded that almost half of Twitter addicts are just trading ‘pointless babble’.

Pear Analytics, a U.S. market research agency, looked at the typical ‘tweets’ sent using the service over a fortnight.

Rather than finding that most users were passing on information of any value, 40 per cent tapped into the micro-blogging site to send apparently futile messages like: ‘I’m eating a sandwich’.

Almost as many tweets were purely ‘conversational’ - like a text message.

And just 8.7 per cent of all tweets were deemed of ‘value’ with worthwhile news content.

The remaining 9.6 per cent of tweets were classed as self promotion and spam.

The micro-blogging website, which launched in 2006, allows users to detail their lives in updates of 140 characters or less.

It has a vast appeal, attracting users from celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus to institutions such as Parliament and the Daily Mail.

Users shot up by a staggering 80 per cent between March and April this year prompting co-founder Biz Stone to comment: 'If this growth rate continues week over week, we'll run out of people on planet Earth to sign up to Twitter by the end of the year.'

Pear Analytics looked at a total of 2,000 messages sent between 11:00am and 5:00pm over two weeks.

They suspected that most tweets would be self promotion or spam as increasing numbers of companies are turning to Twitter in an attempt to drive up sales.

Ryan Kelly, founder and CEO of Pear Analytics, said: ‘With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else.'

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:45 PM on 17th August 2009

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mercurial said:

Twitter is the biggest bunch of crap ever invented. How intelligent people can still find twitter appealing is
Twitter is for twits.

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grayston said:

If I want to read pointless babble, I go to Facebook.

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Users shot up by a staggering 80 per cent between March and April this year prompting co-founder Biz Stone to comment: 'If this growth rate continues week over week, we'll run out of people on planet Earth to sign up to Twitter by the end of the year.

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